The present invention concerns computer telephony systems and in particular, provides a system and method of adding text messaging capabilities to an outbound call system.
Telephony call centers which place outbound calls and receive inbound calls typically utilize a telephone call center management system to help automate much of the process. Agents with headsets and terminals converse with calling and called parties, while automatic phone dialers dial phone numbers and route connected calls to the agents. The telephone call center management system controls, among other functions, the dialing of outbound telephone numbers from a predefined, sorted customer call list having a number of customer call records within each customer call list.
These customer call lists are usually downloaded from a call record source, such as a host computer, to the telephony call center management system once during a twenty-four hour period, often during the non-busy early hours of the morning. Individual records from the customer call list[s] are then grouped and processed during the day as call campaigns. A call campaign comprises a collection or group customer call records generally having one or more common attributes. A telephony call center can generally run several call campaigns simultaneously.
A typical use of a telephony call center is to initiate an outbound call campaign to contact a predefined group or segment of customers or potential customers that have a common attribute. For example, a call campaign may be directed at contacting persons having credit card accounts with payments overdue by 60 days. The user can instruct a record source, such as a host computer containing a credit card account database, to sort through that database and select the overdue credit card accounts. The host computer then downloads the overdue credit card account records as one or more call lists to the telephone call center management system. This is often referred to as batch processing.
The telephone call center management system then processes the call list as a call campaign by automatically dialing customer credit card account telephone numbers included within the call record, and connecting answered calls to agents. The agents can then converse with the called parties and attempt to reconcile the overdue accounts. Agents record the results of the reconciliation attempt on agent terminals. At the end of the day, the customer call list with the results of the phone calls are uploaded back to the host computer database for storage and future reference.
Each call record may have more than one contact telephone number. When multiple contact telephone numbers are included in a call record, they are prioritized. In other words, there is a primary contact number and one or more secondary contact numbers. Thus, if the telephone call center management system cannot establish voice communications with a called party at the primary contact number, then the system will record the fact that the primary contact number attempt was unsuccessful and either immediately or at some point in the future initiate one or more subsequent attempts by dialing the secondary contact telephone number(s). The process of attempting to establish voice communications by sequentially dialing the primary and secondary contact telephone numbers included in a call record may be performed one or more times during a call campaign. If voice communications cannot be established, then the telephone call center management system records a no contact event.
However, since the primary goal of a telephone call center is to make as many customer contacts as possible, no contact events are not desirable. Accordingly, systems and methods have been developed to attempt to convert what would otherwise be classified as no contact events into positive customer contacts. One such system is the DAVOX UNISON(copyright) call center management system, manufactured by the Davox Corporation of Westford, Mass., which incorporates an automated voice messaging system.
When the UNISON(copyright) system detects that an outbound call is answered by a voice mail system or an answering machine, the system automatically plays a pre-recorded message over the voice connection, which is recorded by the answering machine or voice mail system. In this manner, a call that is connected to a device that is capable of receiving a voice message can result in the delivery of a message without requiring the call to be routed to a live, call center agent. Thus, messages can be left without requiring any action on the part of a call center agent. This results in greater productivity of a call center since call center agents will only be connected to live connected parties.
However, there are times when a voice mail or answering machine is not available or when a customer has indicated that he or she would prefer to receive a message other than a voice message. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a system and method of integrating text messaging to an outbound call campaign to account for those situations where a voice mail or answering machine is not available or where a preferred secondary contact number is not a voice contact number but is rather a number that connects the call to a device capable of receiving text messages such as a computer or facsimile machine, e-mail address, pager, or the like.
The disclosed invention provides a system and method of integrating outbound text messaging capabilities to a telephone call center management system. The outbound text messages are a secondary means by which a customer can be contacted, the primary means being voice communications between a call center agent and the customer.
The system includes a telephone call management system including a dialer for dialing a plurality of contact telephone numbers included in at least one call record in a call list. Each call record includes a primary customer contact identifier, such as a voice line telephone number and at least one text message destination identifier, which is included as a secondary customer contact address. The text message destination identifier may be a telephone number for accessing a text message receiving device or it may be an e-mail address where a text message may be sent.
The system also includes a text message processing system including text message memory for accepting and storing at least one text message for transmission to a text message receiving device and for transmitting the text message upon connection to the text message receiving device.
The invention also provides a method of integrating text messaging capabilities to an outbound call campaign, which includes the following steps. First, a text message destination identifier associated with a text message receiving device is included in a call record associated with a customer as a secondary customer contact address. The call record also includes a primary contact telephone number, which is preferably a land line or wireless voice telephone number. A call list including a plurality of call records including the primary contact telephone numbers and the text message destination identifier is provided to a telephone call management system including a dialer.
The method further includes the step of storing at least one text message in a text message processing system. The telephone call center management first attempts to establish voice communications with at least one customer by dialing the primary contact telephone number associated with said customer. If voice communications cannot be established with the customer the telephone call center management system attempts to contact the customer using the text message destination identifier. In one embodiment, the text message identifier comprises a telephone number of a communications device capable of receiving text messages, such as a fax machine, a GSM compatible mobile telephone utilizing the short message service (SMS) standard for text messages, a pager or similar device. When communications are established between the telephone call center management system and the text message receiving device, then, at least one stored text message is transmitted to the text message receiving device.